H. S. Olcott and “The Science of Eastern Magic”

 Bird's-eye view of New York published in 1874 showing the waterfront, Brooklyn Bridge, with Battery Park and Governors Island in the foreground.  Schlegel, George / Publisher: Tamsen & Dethlefs, New York (from “The Shape of New York”)

Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) recalled in the first volume of Old Diary Leaves (1895) his circumstances in November 1874 following his investigation of “The Eddy Manifestations” in Chittenden, Vermont.  He resumed his new friendship with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in New York City, where they both resided.

After Robert Dale Owen’s public denunciation of the Holmes mediums, Olcott arranged, through Owen, with Mrs. Holmes for a course of test-seances under his own conditions.  In the portion of his case study People From The Other World (1875) reporting about “The Katie King Affair,” Olcott chronicled his investigation of Nelson and Jennie Holmes in Philadelphia during January 1875 in association with Owen, General F. J. Lippitt and HPB.

Olcott described many glimpses of the face of John King, who also spoke with him during seances.  He received written messages from Katie King and 'J.K.'  Eventually he also sighted the face of Katie King, as in the following excerpt:

At the evening seance, the usual precautions were taken, and as usual hands were shown and John appeared and spoke to me.  A woman’s hand and arm were thrust quite out of the window, and after an intermission of a few minutes there came a face which struck me as soon as I saw it as the Katie King of the Holmes photograph.

During Olcott’s last test seance, both Nelson and Jennie Holmes were present and Madame Blavatsky was among the sitters.   Olcott appraised that it was HPB who was responsible for not only summoning John King but he theorized that "she intimated her will that Katie should step out of the cabinet that evening, and he wrote her with his own hand a message to the effect that her orders should ‘be obeyed.’” Olcott described what happened after Mrs. Holmes went into a "death-like trance," which he also accepted to be "a strange exercise of Mme. de B.'s power."

Phenomenal disturbances soon began: raps were heard all over the cabinet, various voices addressed us from within its recesses, and a detached hand, coming out of the right aperture, and gliding down the face of the cabinet, clutched a small hand-bell that stood upon a table, and, ringing it all the while, rose again to the aperture and disappeared with it, within.

This last manifestation was calculated to startle one out of all his preconceived notions of both anatomy and gravity, and it really gave to the seance a most uncanny aspect.  But the crowning test was yet to come.  We heard the bolt drawn inside, and in breathless silence watched the cabinet door swing slowly open.  I sat within a few feet of the entrance, and plainly saw at the threshold a short, thin, girlish figure, clad in white from crown to sole.  She stood there motionless for an instant, and then slowly stepped forward a pace or two.  By the obscure light we could see that she was shorter and much more delicately built than the medium, and her dress with its trailing skirt, and the long veil that completely enveloped her form, were as crisp as though just from the hands of the modiste.  Who she was or what she was, I do not know, but one thing I do know,—she was not Jennie Holmes, nor any puppet or confederate of hers.  And I know, further, that Mme. De B., who sat next to me, uttered one word in a strange tongue, and the spectre immediately withdrew as noiselessly as she had entered.

Something at this moment that Olcott didn’t take into consideration was that he had reported there were several occasions throughout his experiences chronicled at the Eddy Homestead when his own thoughts and those of others had been noticed to bring responses from the materialized people, such as when he mentioned that a ‘spirit’ “reappeared at my mental request after he had retired.”  In Chapter VIII he reported about a young lady seance room attendee who saw her father, the late Captain Johnson, appear from the cabinet wearing citizen’s clothes.  “The daughter mentally requested him to appear to her in his uniform, whereupon he retired for a moment and then returned in full naval dress, with sword and epaulettes.”

Olcott reflected about ‘John King’ in Old Diary Leaves: ". . . after seeing what H. P. B. could do in the way of producing mayavic (i.e., hypnotic) illusions and in the control of elementals, I am persuaded that 'John King' was a humbugging elemental . . ."

As recounted by Olcott, he found a note written by HPB that divulged (as she assumed) it was she “helped by M. And his power” (her Master) who “brought out the faces of John King and Katie King from the Astral Light, produced the phenomena of materialisation, and allowed the spiritualists to believe it was done through the medium of Mrs. Holmes.”

Olcott described some of the first phenomena he recalled having witnessed in the presence of HPB, including her successfully beckoning a butterfly apparition to enter a room and the materialization of edible fruit.  He wrote, “Little by little, H. P. B. let me know of the existence of Eastern adepts and their powers, and gave me by a multitude of phenomena the proofs of her own control over the occult forces of nature."

Olcott chronicled the assorted wonders that occurred in relation to HPB.  The following excerpt from the first volume of Old Diary Leaves offers one example.  I am including Olcott’s explanation of the ‘important law’ that was  illustrated to show his assumptions.

For a year or so after we took up housekeeping at the "Lamasery," my family silver was used for the table, but at last it had to be sent away, and H. P. B. helped me to pack it up.  That day after dinner, when we were to have coffee, we noticed that there were no sugar tongs, and in handing her the sugar basin I put in it a teaspoon instead.  She asked where were our sugar tongs, and upon my replying that we had packed it up to send away with the other silver, she said: "Well, we must have another one, mustn't we?" and, reaching her hand down beside her chair, brought up a nondescript tongs, the like of which one would scarcely find in a jeweller's shop.  It had the legs much longer than usual, and the two claws slit like the prongs of a pickle-fork; while inside the shoulder of one of the legs was engraved the cryptograph of Mahátma "M."  I have the curio now at Adyar.

An important law is illustrated here.  To create anything objective out of the diffused matter of space, the first step is to think of the desired object—its form, pattern, colour, material, weight, and other characteristics: the picture of it must be sharp and distinct as to every detail; the next step is to put the trained Will in action, employ one's knowledge of the laws of matter and the process of its conglomeration, and compel the elemental spirits to form and fashion what one wishes made.  If the operator fails in either of these details, his results will be imperfect.  In this case before us it is evident that H. P. B. had confused in her memory the two different shapes of sugar-tongs and a pickle fork and combined them together into this nondescript or hybrid table implement.  Of course, the result was to give stronger proof of the genuineness of her phenomenon than if she had made perfect sugar-tongs: for such may be bought in shops everywhere.

In the first volume of Old Diary Leaves, Olcott chronicled the writing and editing of HPB’s Isis Unveiled spanning the summer of 1875 through 1877.  He had often been left to contemplate her states of consciousness in respect to the creation of the book and was convinced that elements of the book which could not be traced to accessible literary sources of quotation had been drawn “From the Astral Light, and, by her soul-senses, from her Teachers—the ‘Brothers,’ ‘Adepts,’ ‘Sages, ‘Masters,’ as they have been variously called.”  Olcott cited letters written by HPB to her family.  Excerpts of these letters were published in articles by Vera Johnston, HPB’s niece, in Path magazine.  Olcott commented about these letters:

In those she plainly admits that her body was occupied at such times, and the literary work done by foreign entities who taught me through her lips and gave out knowledge of which she herself did not possess even a glimmering in her normal state.

Taken literally, as it reads, this explanation is hardly satisfactory; for, if the disjointed thought-bits of her psychical casse-tête always fitted together so as to make her puzzle-map strictly geometrical, then her literary work should be free from errors, and her materials run together into an orderly scheme of logical and literary sequence.  Needless to say, the opposite is the case . . .

His commentary about ‘the masters' included referring to them as members of an “Occult Brotherhood” and mentioning that they were “Unseen, unsuspected as the vivifying spiritual currents of the Akash . . .”  

It was in People From The Other World that Olcott first divulged his appraisal about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky that “. . . instead of being controlled by spirits to do their will, it is she who seems to control them to do her bidding.”  A conception that seems to have been beyond his realization is that of an omnipresent Force operating in unusual ways in proximity and in sympathy with specific individuals to foster some manner of lesson or lessons.  

Commentary and anecdotes that seem to offer contradictions are always useful for reflection.  For example, Olcott wrote about HPB in Old Diary Leaves: “. . . it may be said that, throughout all our years of intimacy, she wasted enough psychic force on useless phenomena to have sufficed to convince the whole Royal Society if it had been judiciously employed . . . However, all that is past and gone, and my task is to record, as remembered, the psychical experiments which satisfied my critical reason as to the reality of the science of Eastern Magic.”

The alternative question that must then be considered is how self-aware is the 'Energy Source' making possible such ‘magic.’

Often in reading about history’s ‘paranormal people’ such as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,  one finds that repeated experiences of uncanny phenomena manifesting around themselves may inspire them to hypothesize that they are somehow endowed with some exceptional 'power' or mental capacity.  Something that I do not have in common with these individuals is that due to the chronology and variety of my own interaction with unexplained phenomena, it was obvious that the occurrences around me were not attributable to conscious directives of my own.